Thursday, October 09, 2014

Beauty Escape


Where to begin? Last week was an unexpectedly rough week. Let's start at the beginning - when David and I got married, he had a dog. Katie was a low key and mellow chocolate lab and she fit in to our new life. Fast forward through three babies and more life adjustments. A few years ago, Katie died of old age. And David has patiently waited for us me to consider another dog.

Recently when David and the littles were at soccer practice, they met a gal who fosters dogs and she was telling them about a dog she had that she was looking for a good home for. We went to meet him and really liked him. The process took a while but we decided to adopt Max.

Max came home with us on a Sunday night and we began the process of getting to know him and having him get to know us. Without every detail, we had two ok days and two very rough days. The fourth day ended in a chewed off handle to my laundry basket, dog throw up, chewed up ruined blinds and more. After all of this chaos and stress - Max just could not stay. This was not blessing our family in any way. It is a sad ending, but definitely the right one for our family. You may see a few little glimpses of him in photos as I work through my recent photos.

Before the worst part of the fourth day, Rachel asked if we could take our lunch to the lake in our neighborhood. I hesitated because I knew we could not manage to take our new dog and we had not left him home more than one hour yet so I was uncertain. I absolutely hated that I hesitated to do something we love doing so much. In the end, I knew we needed some normal so I said yes. We left Max at home in the Laundry Room {without the laundry basket - he got a door open and got into another room} and went on our adventure.

This time was a blessing and my littles sweetly loved on and encouraged on me and each other in the midst of the hard and chaos. One of the biggest blessings to me of this experience was seeing my children rise up and be a blessing in the midst. It became obvious to me that there are no more important yeses in my world than to the four people who share our home. These souls count for eternity. May I say no to things that interfere more often than I say no to them. Rachel's idea and God's creation blessed me beautifully this Thursday afternoon. No decision had been made yet about Max staying - this was in the midst of the hard and it was well with my soul. Thank You, Jesus.